LSP
Protocol letting any editor talk to any language's analysis backend — defines completion, hover, go-to-definition.
Definition
Language Server Protocol decouples the editor from per-language tooling. An LSP server (pyright, gopls, rust-analyzer) runs as a separate process and serves completions, hover docs, diagnostics, and refactors over JSON-RPC. LSP is why a single editor like VS Code can support hundreds of languages with consistent UX. It is conceptually similar to MCP for AI tools.
When to use
See also
- IDE — An editor bundled with project tooling — file tree, terminal, debugger, language server — for writing software.
- MCP — Anthropic's open standard for connecting LLMs to external tools and data sources over JSON-RPC.